Backstage and on red carpet at the Golden Globes
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Michael Douglas' peers were as happy to see him at Sunday's Golden Globes as Douglas, who announced just last week he had beaten cancer, was to be there.
"There's just got to be an easier way to get a standing ovation," the actor said after receiving a rousing response when he walked on stage to present the night's final award, for best dramatic film.
"It's been a quiet year. Catherine is doing a Broadway show and six months of cancer," the silver-haired actor had joked earlier as he walked the red carpet with his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Douglas, who announced last week that his malignant tumor is gone, looked fit as he arrived for his first major public appearance since completing treatment.
"After you go through this, you have a greater appreciation of your fans. I feel good. I'm pacing myself and I'm enjoying it. I feel very happy to be here," he said, turning serious.
As those fans shouted his name from the bleachers, he turned to wave and smile.
Branjolie
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Brad Pitt hung back, letting his partner, Angelina Jolie, work the media gauntlet at this year's Golden Globes.
Under slicked-back hair and behind sunglasses, Pitt surveyed the scene from the middle of the red carpet, chatting up friends as Jolie answered questions.
"My girls are always happy about me getting dressed up," said the actress, clad in an emerald gown.
Another Hollywood power couple, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, held hands while Kidman fielded most of the questions.
"When I make a film, I always say it's our film together," she said, nodding in Urban's direction. "We share each other's accolades."
Hiker enjoys fame
Aron Ralston, the hiker who was trapped beneath a boulder for "127 Hours," discovered a completely different atmosphere at the Golden Globes.
"If only there had been hoards of screaming women cheering me on," he said of his desperate experience in a desolate Utah canyon that resulted in his cutting off his right arm to save his life.
Ralston, whose real-life story earned three nominations, proclaimed it "the best movie that's ever been made."
"They get the Aron Ralston award if nothing else," he quipped on the carpet.
It was clear he was thoroughly enjoying his moment in the Hollywood spotlight.
"It's my first time and unless I amputate my other hand, I doubt I'll be back here," he said.
De Niro jokes
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Robert De Niro decided to accept his Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award with an intentional comic touch.
It produced mixed reaction on the Internet, where tweeters and bloggers either loved it or hated it.
"There are so many ways you can go with it and I thought this would be more fun for this kind of evening," De Niro said backstage. "So that's why I chose to do it this way."
De Niro didn't have his trophy with him.
"The top fell off," he said. "I will have to solder it back on."
De Niro tweaked the award's presenters, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and many others, in his acceptance speech.
"The important thing is that we are all in this together — the filmmakers who make the movies and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association members who, in turn, pose for pictures with the movie stars," he said.
"I'm sorry more members of the Foreign Press aren't with us tonight," he continued, "but many of them were deported right before the show, along with most of the waiters, and Javier Bardem.
"For the rest of you, I hope your papers are in order because Homeland Security will be checking them just as soon as they're through with the full-body scans of Megan Fox."
De Niro also joked that he was hawking a boxed-set of all his films, including such lesser acclaimed ones as "Jacknife" and "Little Fockers."
"And I'll be selling them in the lobby right after I pose for some more pictures with the remaining members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association," he said.
Publicist remembered
Publicist Ronni Chasen, whose brazen killing stunned the entertainment industry, was remembered by veteran songwriter Diane Warren, who dedicated her Golden Globe for best original motion picture song to her.
Chasen was shot to death in November as she drove home from a premiere and party for "Burlesque.
Warren's winning song, "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," was featured in the film, which Chasen had been talking up for awards hours before she died.
"I want to dedicate this to somebody a lot of you knew and all of us loved, Ronni Chasen," Warren said on stage Sunday night.
It was the songwriter's first Golden Globe.
Police believe Chasen was killed as part of a bungled robbery attempt when she stopped her luxury car at a Beverly Hills intersection.